Top 5 Wanted TPW cards

As with every expansion, each set brings out in new exciting cards to change/ shake up the environment. This is purely from my own observation and some ebay sniping, I have listed down top 5 rares and uncommons that is sought after in the set. Naturally, i took out personalities since they are heavily faction related, while this list is mainly to show the top generic cards.

Top 5 wanted rare cards in TPW

1. Only Action Speaks
The hate against honor is obvious. This card, simply shuts down honor for the entire phase. This card is a bane to honor decks, especially when they are close to honor out, 35-36 to reach 40, and the military decks comes knocking on your last two provinces. Any honor you try to make and WHAM. No more honor for the entire phase! If the military is smart, they can play a card that creates a gain and play OAS, effectively neutering any honor gains for the entire battle phase. Good bye honor deck.

Any honor decks that honors in limited as well, play this and watch him babble for a minute or two, wondering how is he going to get that extra honor to sprint. Unfortunately, the card that this card is supposed to heavily meta, is an LSC deck (Last Step Castle- Dragon SH), yet is doesn’t affect the stronghold at all.

Second ability is useless for most clans except big fatty crab peeps or Onis. Most people play mainly for the anti-honor function.

2. Scouting Far Afield
Another good card, I wouldn’t call it staple, but it is highly sought after, since with this card, you have a chance to get back some strategy cards that you may have used before and especially if that card happens to meta nicely the opponent.

Meeting honor decks and you can play Only Action Speaks up to 6 times? Simply solid gold.

3. Cost of Pride
Reduce ranged attack by 3 and the ability to bow / unbow any card that is different from base force. Almost everything basically. I doubt there’s any card that do not gain any semblence of force pump. This card is good is all military decks, except for duelling, mainly due to its low focus value. But this card is generally good to put in military decks who expects a lot of opposition, force pumps and bow techs.

4. Rising Sun Blade
An 8 gold weapon with +6F/+1C. 3FV and ability to PK any card at 5F and below that has no attachment. And in most cases, you can attach on turn 3 to start attacking. This card is simply good due to its destructive power to destroy cards.

However, in the environment with rout, it is a rather risky investment but some decks, simply worth that +6F alone. Nevertheless… the fear of this weapon coming at the defender early.. is priceless.

5. Deathly Aura
The New sneak attack. The value is insanely high due to being a sneak attack with a focus value of 4. And it’s a dark virtue, meaning that spider paragon makes use of this very well. However, I’m not too sold on this when people compare this to be better than Sneak Attack, since it requires you to perform the action by the samurai, meaning that you cannot use follower ability such as Imperial Elite Guard, use shugenja related spell or monk kiho and even play terrain. The freedom of choosing any action makes Sneak Attack better. But then again, having 2x sets of sneak attack is still very good for any military deck to enable the first action in an attack.

Top 5 wanted uncommon in TPW

1. Inexorable Defeat
Staple for most decks. The ability of movement, and prevent further movement to battlefield is strong. You can use this as defender to avoid any more attacker moving in and as attacker, to avoid defender sending more defenders.

The second ability is just as solid. Destruction of terrain or region. The capability of destroying those card type in battle/open makes it key.

The 2 honor loss is negligible really. Most decks can always recoup the honor loss and the military decks that dont, basically have (dash) – honor requirement to ensure that they can continue to increase the military build-up and not hampered by honor.

2. Radiant Steel
A good weapon for 4g, gives a +3F/+1C with a built in ability to destroy weapon/armor. That makes it efficient for use a weapon that destroys those other types. This weapon sees a lot of use in Kensai decks since kensai can destroy the weapon first, then use Yarijutsu to off the unit. The added force and fv makes it more interesting but I would say it’s comparative to Tempered No-Dachi in PotD. That weapon does the better destruction (item and follower, compared to this item, weapon or armor) but lower one force and fv.

3. Reckless Confrontation
Useful in high honor PH decks. For military, it’s Lion and Unicorn Utaku Plains deck, and defensive honor, it’s Phoenix and Crane and Dragon. This card neutralised some of the threats posed by super unit Mantis DGC decks, and they tend to stack up to a massive train of 4F followers and super personalities to sustain it. The ability to gain 1 honor per 0F card is what makes this card so amazing. Usually, you can net around 2-4 honor per card with this action most of the time, unless you happen to meet naked decks, (peeps with no attachment). But in those situations, it is still a decent force reduction card, since your personality performing is in the range of 3 to 4PH.

4. Unimpeachable Name
This is a tough choice because the second ability is only useful for shugenja decks, which most people wont run. However, the reaction is gold. The ability to rehonor before getting your personality gets killed by a dishonored effect. So this helps to avoid getting your personality killed when targetted by Imperial Adjudication versus a duelling deck while being dishonored.
The important role of this card is to meta the possibility that post Empire at War, (a set coming soon) dishonor decks are on the rise, with the amount of support for courtier/magistrate. Being able to somewhat interrupt the ability of dishonor in its tracks can be crucial.

5. Province Assaulted
4FV and the ability to unbow two units is good on opponent’s turn. The first ability is at the moment playable since most people still play boxable and this card will anti that boxable better than burn the village. I find this still useful for the second ability, giving the military decks a chance to defend and being able to commit during your turn to attack.

There are other cards worth mention that is chasable rares from this set, The Plague Wars, but I think the mention of these top 5 is right on the dot, seeing as these cards were immediately sold out from Koku Redemption tells a lot of the chasebility of these cards.

I’ll be back with top usable cards from IG3, since the full spoiler is now available.